Westminster Politics

Bert_ said:
Countless things are problems in isolation. Common sense says you need to prioritise those problems and aim to fix the biggest ones first. Benefit fraud is way down that list.

Unless you don't want certain things fixing and need a scapegoat to distract attention away from them.
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Absolutely. Also my thoughts on the matter.
 
711 said:
It's chicken and egg. If people want PR they're going to have to support a smaller party and grow it to the point it holds the balance of power. Trouble is too many use FPTP as an excuse for not supporting a smaller party. But they're never going to get what they want until they do.
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Agreed.
 
711 said:
It's chicken and egg. If people want PR they're going to have to support a smaller party and grow it to the point it holds the balance of power. Trouble is too many use FPTP as an excuse for not supporting a smaller party. But they're never going to get what they want until they do.
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It's not really an excuse though, because there's nothing about the history of our political system which suggests the course of action you propose is likely to achieve the desired outcome, and everything to suggest it would either fail entirely or just split the "not Tory" vote even further and hand them a majority every election.

FPTP by it's nature makes it difficult for a third party to build momentum because unless you somehow manage to win over a plurality of the voters in a given constituency you might as well be chucking your ballot in the bin whilst making it more likely that someone you don't like will win. It's easy to say people should just vote differently, but the reality isn't that simple.

It's chicken and egg to an extent, but really it's more like a choice between buying a chicken who has never laid an egg before in the hopes that it someday will, or putting your effort into building a fence so your neighbour's cow won't shit all over your garden.
 
TheGame said:
It’s about fecking time he had some balls.
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Notice that he's started standing up for himself after he got a shot in the big golden carriage? The guy was just biding his time until he had achieved his goals. Now the gloves can come off.
 
Mr Pigeon said:
12 years ago when Labour were still in power;

1) my salary kept up with inflation
2) I had a local library
3) I could get a dentist appointment
4) I had hair

I've lost all of those things under a Tory government. Perhaps Mr Sunak would like to explain why these tragedies have occured under his government's watch?
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The government’s approach to the EU retained law bill is further proof that some sanity is being restored under Sunak after Johnson treating the whole Brexit issue like the Bullingdon club trashing a restaurant. Seeing Badenok drive this is, like a Weghorst hattrick, highly implausible but welcome all the same.
 
MoskvaRed said:
The government’s approach to the EU retained law bill is further proof that some sanity is being restored under Sunak after Johnson treating the whole Brexit issue like the Bullingdon club trashing a restaurant. Seeing Badenok drive this is, like a Weghorst hattrick, highly implausible but welcome all the same.
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Is that the next Thor film?
 
MoskvaRed said:
The government’s approach to the EU retained law bill is further proof that some sanity is being restored under Sunak after Johnson treating the whole Brexit issue like the Bullingdon club trashing a restaurant. Seeing Badenok drive this is, like a Weghorst hattrick, highly implausible but welcome all the same.
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Beautiful turn of phrase. The opposite of Weghorst turning around with the ball at his feet.
 
jeff_goldblum said:
It's not really an excuse though, because there's nothing about the history of our political system which suggests the course of action you propose is likely to achieve the desired outcome, and everything to suggest it would either fail entirely or just split the "not Tory" vote even further and hand them a majority every election.

FPTP by it's nature makes it difficult for a third party to build momentum because unless you somehow manage to win over a plurality of the voters in a given constituency you might as well be chucking your ballot in the bin whilst making it more likely that someone you don't like will win. It's easy to say people should just vote differently, but the reality isn't that simple.

It's chicken and egg to an extent, but really it's more like a choice between buying a chicken who has never laid an egg before in the hopes that it someday will, or putting your effort into building a fence so your neighbour's cow won't shit all over your garden.
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You don't have to go far back in history, the Liberals nearly achieved it in 2011, but Cameron outwitted them in the referendum.
 
711 said:
You don't have to go far back in history, the Liberals nearly achieved it in 2011, but Cameron outwitted them in the referendum.
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It's impressive how Cameron was able to utilise the Chewbacca Defense against the proposal and it somehow hoodwinked voters.

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Should be no surprise to hear that the "£250 million on AV" thing was bullshit. It was based on thinking £85 million would be spent on the referendum, apparently (actual cost was £70 million) and £130 million for new voting machines fit for AV (even though Australia have AV and don't use the machines, and we weren't planning to either).
 
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711 said:
You don't have to go far back in history, the Liberals nearly achieved it in 2011, but Cameron outwitted them in the referendum.
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The coalition only happened though because an established party with huge name recognition benefitted from a very specific set of political circumstances.

The reason the Lib Dems did incredibly well in that election was partially because the traditional left-centre-right alignment of modern British political parties had gone out of whack and partially because the Tories weren't particularly convincing. Lots of young, lefty voters were turned off by Labour's shift to the right, Iraq, tuition fees etc. saw the Lib Dems as their best option and switched, which partially mitigated the impact of a smaller than expected number of floating voters switching to the Tories. Consequently, whilst Labour's vote collapsed to 29%, the Tories still only managed about 36% and they weren't able to gobble up the Lib Dem-Tory marginals/three-horse race seats they needed to build a majority.

Third parties holding the balance of power in our political system is fantastically rare and it took a very odd set of circumstances for it to happen in 2010. Given that they utterly trashed their reputation in coalition, it seems very unlikely that the Lib Dems will return to anything approaching the level of popularity they did in 2005-2010 anytime soon, barring some sort of electoral pact with Labour. In terms of a new party making enough of a splash in parliamentary democracy to become a major player/power-broker on a regular basis - the last time a party did that was Labour in 1918, and that only happened because new voting laws more than doubled the electorate by giving non-property owning men the vote. The prospects of it happening now are incredibly remote.
 
jeff_goldblum said:
The coalition only happened though because an established party with huge name recognition benefitted from a very specific set of political circumstances.

The reason the Lib Dems did incredibly well in that election was partially because the traditional left-centre-right alignment of modern British political parties had gone out of whack and partially because the Tories weren't particularly convincing. Lots of young, lefty voters were turned off by Labour's shift to the right, Iraq, tuition fees etc. saw the Lib Dems as their best option and switched, which partially mitigated the impact of a smaller than expected number of floating voters switching to the Tories. Consequently, whilst Labour's vote collapsed to 29%, the Tories still only managed about 36% and they weren't able to gobble up the Lib Dem-Tory marginals/three-horse race seats they needed to build a majority.

Third parties holding the balance of power in our political system is fantastically rare and it took a very odd set of circumstances for it to happen in 2010. Given that they utterly trashed their reputation in coalition, it seems very unlikely that the Lib Dems will return to anything approaching the level of popularity they did in 2005-2010 anytime soon, barring some sort of electoral pact with Labour. In terms of a new party making enough of a splash in parliamentary democracy to become a major player/power-broker on a regular basis - the last time a party did that was Labour in 1918, and that only happened because new voting laws more than doubled the electorate by giving non-property owning men the vote. The prospects of it happening now are incredibly remote.
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Coalition happened. The political situation changes all the time, but it will never change in the 'lefty' favour unless they do something about it. So, still excuses I'm afraid.
 
CassiusClaymore said:
With voter suppression seemingly not working as well as hoped I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to row back to these heady days next.
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We’ve no idea how successful voter suppression was. The Tories might have lost over 1000 seats but they also still won 2296 seats compared to Labour’s 2674 and Lib Dem’s 1628.

Maybe it would have been a bigger blood bath but for voter ID. Turnout was low and that was quickly attributed to traditional Tory voters who couldn’t hold their nose and vote for another party and it seems like they are only looking to count people who were turned away from the ballot box for not having ID in the stats as if the people who didn’t even bother trying because they didn’t have ID and knew the rules so didn’t try didn’t actually count.
 
Pexbo said:
We’ve no idea how successful voter suppression was. The Tories might have lost over 1000 seats but they also still won 2296 seats compared to Labour’s 2674 and Lib Dem’s 1628.

Maybe it would have been a bigger blood bath but for voter ID. Turnout was low and that was quickly attributed to traditional Tory voters who couldn’t hold their nose and vote for another party and it seems like they are only looking to count people who were turned away from the ballot box for not having ID in the stats as if the people who didn’t even bother trying because they didn’t have ID and knew the rules so didn’t try didn’t actually count.
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Simplistic view...they got battered again so not the results they were hoping for.

Also sort out that final sentence. I nearly passed out reading it.
 
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